rkened by the sun and
wind, gave them the look of peasants of southern Europe. In bearing they
were much gayer and more unconstrained than the Chinese.

Mongolia, the land of many names, with a great past and perhaps with a
future, but to-day merely a pawn in the world's game, is a great plateau
rising some four thousand feet above the sea, the eastern extension of
the T'ien-Shan, or "Heavenly Mountains." It stretches east and west
nearly two thousand miles, but its north and south width is only about
nine hundred. In the central part of the plateau is a huge depression
which the Mongol calls Gobi, the "Desert," or Shamo, the "Great Sand,"
and the Chinese, Han-Hai, or "Rainless Sea." To the north the high land
rises and breaks into the wooded hills and mountains of the Altai Range,
and there are many streams, most of them finding their way sooner or
later into the Amur. To the south the land rolls in great grassy waves
up to the foot of the mountain barrier along the Chinese frontier, but
the forests have all been swept away, and the few streams quickly lose
themselves in the ground. Over most of the seven hundred miles between
Kalgan and Urga there are no trees save half a dozen scrub elms, and the
only rivers are the Sha Ho, or "Rivers of Sand." But the grassland,
after the summer rains have set in, is like the rolling prairies of the
West, and even in Gobi there are only about fifty miles quite without
vegetation. Elsewhere there is a sparse growth of coarse scrub broken by
stretches of rock and sand.

In crossing Gobi one sees here and there a marsh or shallow salt lake,
telling of a different climate in a bygone time, but to-day the passing
caravan depends on wells of varying depth, and found at irregular
intervals,--ten, twenty, even fifty miles apart. They date back beyond
the tradition of living men, and each has its name and character. In
some the water is never-failing, in others it quickly runs dry.
Occasionally it is slightly brackish, but usually it is clear and cold.
Without these wells the three hundred miles of Gobi would impose an
almost impassable barrier between North and South Mongolia. As it is,
the desert takes its toll from the passing caravan; thirst, hunger,
heat, and cold count their victims among the animals by thousands, and
the way is marked by their bleaching bones.

This great, featureless, windswept plateau keeps but a scanty
population of less than three millions. On the northern and s